Editing Matt Ruff (section)

==Early life and education==
Ruff was born in [[Brooklyn]], New York City, in 1965, to a [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]] family of [[Germans|German]] ancestry.<ref name="moral" /> His father was a hospital chaplain, and his maternal grandfather was a missionary.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.harpercollins.com/authors/|title=Author Listings: HarperCollins Publishers|website=HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher}}</ref> At the age of 5, he decided he wanted to be a fiction writer. He spent his childhood and adolescence learning how to tell stories.<ref name="author" /> In elementary school, he wrote a number of short stories, many of them starring his classmates in scenarios cribbed from movies or TV. Ruff has said that reading these aloud in English class was his first experience performing in front of an audience and his first solid evidence that he had what it took to entertain people with his storytelling.<ref name="about" /> 

Many adults around him attempted to persuade him to choose a different career, but Ruff's mother was supportive of his hope to become a writer; for one of Ruff's birthdays, she bought him an [[IBM Selectric typewriter]].<ref name="moral" /> From third to eighth grade, Ruff attended a [[parochial school]].<ref name = "moral" /> He attended [[Stuyvesant High School]] in [[Manhattan]]. One of his teachers there was the memoirist [[Frank McCourt]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_08_011474.php |title=An Interview with Matt Ruff |publisher=Bookslut |date=August 2007 |accessdate=2007-10-31 }}</ref>

Ruff's first sustained effort at a novel was a soap opera–like story about a family with a lot of children (having only older half siblings, Ruff was fascinated by the concept of siblings). He wrote it in the 1970s, but never published it. Describing it, Ruff said "Think ''[[Eight Is Enough]]'' with [[surrealism|surreal]] elements. There was no overall plot, just a series of loosely linked episodes—a chapter about the boys and girls digging competing tunnel systems under the house would be followed by one in which they got infected by some weird flu strain and started passing out in the halls. Periodically I’d set aside what I’d written and start the whole thing over again".<ref name = "about">{{Cite web|url=http://www.bymattruff.com/unpublished-works-and-ephemera/|title=Unpublished works and ephemera &#124; bymattruff.com}}</ref>

During Ruff's last semester at [[Cornell University]], his mother died. He graduated in 1987. One of Ruff's English professors had been [[Alison Lurie]], who helped Ruff find an agent.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fantastinet.com/interview-matt-ruff/ |website=www.fantastinet.com |access-date=2013-02-06 |title=Interview : Matt Ruff - Fantastinet |date=February 19, 2008 }}{{title missing|date=May 2022}}{{dead link|date=July 2023}}</ref>

His father died after Ruff's first novel was published.<ref name = "moral">{{Cite web|url=http://www.bymattruff.com/about-the-author/an-interesting-moral-education/|title="An Interesting Moral Education" &#124; bymattruff.com}}</ref>